Won't Last a Day
by M. the Inspector
Summary: ((A couple of years after Arya and the Hound part ways...)) The girl stepped around the grave and crouched near him. Her eyes were the same. "So: you're alive," she said. No, he wasn't. Not the way she meant it.


**A/N: So, this is generally show-based, but I'm assuming the same future as in the books (which makes this a SPOILER ALERT!): Arya goes to Braavos in order to become some sort of face-swapping master assassin, and Sandor ends up as a gravedigger in a silent monastery after their head guy (Elder Brother, who's not actually that old and is an excellent healer) saves his life.**

* * *

He was halfway through a grave for some woman who'd washed up when a soft, sure voice interrupted him. "Excuse me, brother."

He stuck his spade in the dirt and turned. His face was mostly covered, he knew that, but the young man stared into his eyes a moment and then swallowed. "It _is _you. I'd heard rumors... people said that the Hound was out digging graves on the Quiet Isle but I really didn't think they'd be right."

_The Hound's dead._ The thought no longer felt like a lie. He looked the young man up and down and saw not much weapon and no muscle to wield it. Didn't look like he wanted a fight, anyway. Sandor turned his back and went back to his work.

"I- listen to me. I've come a long way. I just wanted to talk to you."

_So talk._

"Look, would you _please _put the damn shovel down and look at me? You're the- the last. Everyone's dead. There's nothing left of Arya Stark except you."

_Arya Stark?_ A name he'd not heard in some time nor ever wanted to. He didn't think about it. Paid attention to the swing of his shoulders, the weight of the dirt.

"Come on. Look at me." He'd never heard a man sound so plaintive and girlish and pathetic. _It's called the Quiet Isle for a reason, you sorry little cunt._

The young man sighed and moved around the grave to stand in Sandor's line of vision. "You really _are _the biggest shit in the Seven Kingdoms, aren't you. Still."

At that he looked up. The young man passed a hand over his face and _changed_, his features shifting like oil in water until suddenly it wasn't a young man at all but-...

_No._ Clearly he was mad. The boy had mentioned Arya Stark and now his bitter and diseased mind was playing tricks on him, showing him people who weren't there.

The girl grinned. "I went to Braavos after all," she said. "It turns out the Faceless Men _are _everything they're cracked up to be. You all right?"

He was dizzy. _I need to sit._ He did so carefully, planting the spade in the earth and using it to sink down without collapsing.

The girl stepped around the grave and crouched near him. Her eyes were the same. "So: you're alive," she said.

No. No, he wasn't. Not the way she meant it.

And he couldn't sit still while she crouched there looking at him like that. As soon as he'd caught his breath he stood, leaning heavily on the spade as he lurched up. She watched him fight for balance, watched him shift his weight...

"You're crippled," she realized.

He looked at her. Looked down at his leg. Thought of seeing the bone sticking out of it. The _flies_ landing on the _bone_ sticking out of his leg.

Then he swung the spade up without warning and smashed it into her. Caught her in the head with the flat of it, good and hard.

She crashed down onto her back. Raised up to look at him, more dazed than hurt.

"Aye," he said. One big uneven step closer to her. "Like this."

He brought the shovel down with both hands. Point first this time.

* * *

They escorted him to a small room of stone with a heavy locking door. Silently. _He _talked, though; it seemed silly to try keeping to _that _vow after what he'd just done. What they'd seen him do. Someone must have been watching the whole thing, because brothers had run up immediately, swarming over the girl, trying to help her.

It was too bad; he would have liked her to bleed out slowly on a desolate hill somewhere alone. (Well: not quite alone. He would have liked to watch. Picking his teeth with his dagger while she begged him to help her with it.)

He told this to the brothers who locked him up, but they acted as if they didn't hear. They gave him food and water and then left him be.

At first he didn't like the cell mainly because it was too small to really move around in, and sitting still was miserable for his bad leg. The pain was easier to manage when he walked and stood and dug. _You're crippled,_ she'd said. As if he didn't know!

(In fact he _didn't_ know, though. He'd forgotten what it was like _not _to limp; he'd left all that behind. The leg was something he'd lived with his entire second life and it never even occurred to him to be bitter about it. Until _she _came along.)

Eventually he discovered that there was another reason to hate the cell too: an air shaft in the corner that apparently led right up to the sickroom where the girl was being kept. _She survived, then._ He was a little disappointed. And a lot annoyed, because she often made awful noises, loud and agonized, getting worse by the hour and by the day as the brothers tried to work their healing on her.

He thought they wouldn't succeed. The spade had cut as well as a dull sword, and he'd felt metal strike bone and he well knew which was stronger. It was a _gravedigging _shovel, too. _His _gravedigging shovel. Caked with the worst cursed dirt there was. Surely the wound would foul and fester no matter what they did with it.

For a while he thought of his own screams and knew that she was getting exactly what she deserved. Eventually he wished the sounds would stop, though. They were ugly to listen to, and it wasn't his way. Even when he'd killed cruel – back when he still killed – he had never taken so bloody _long _with it.

He limped over to the air shaft and shouted up it. "Shut the fuck up!"

The noises paused a moment – she heard him. And then they started up again, because she didn't care.

Of _course _she didn't. She'd never been one to listen to him at all, had she.

He got angry at her again. For leaving him, for wailing like this, for _everything. _"Shut up!" he ordered again. Had she always been this weak and womanish? He didn't know. Suddenly he had a good idea as to _why, _and rage – real _rage – _leaped in him for the first time in years. "Is this the first wound you've taken, maybe?" he bellowed. "Is that it?" Wishing he had something to hit. "Why do you think _that _is? Maybe, it's because the last time you got in trouble _you had someone else there to take all your fucking wounds FOR you!_" The hideous infected bite on his neck. The broken ribs from the inn. The dozen other cuts and bruises from the fights _she_ fucking provoked, not to mention everything that the Bitch of Tarth had done to him.

The girl was still just moaning. Not even listening. Ungrateful little _cunt, _after everything he had done for her.

"Someone to carry you all across Westeros looking for your damn family!" He was shouting at the top of his lungs. "Someone to freeze while _you_ slept in his blanket!" Out of fucking control. He couldn't stop. "_Someone to starve so that you could eat_!"

After that he tried a long wordless _roar_, but when even that didn't satisfy him he went and pounded against the heavy wooden door with both fists. Hard enough to shake it on its hinges. Again and again until his hands hurt enough to drown out his anger.

When he was done he sat down again. Awkwardly, carefully; trying not to do anything to make the deep sick throbbing in his leg _worse._

The girl was quiet at last. "That's right, you dumb bitch," he muttered. "Shut it."

* * *

Eventually food came. He ate it in peace; she wasn't whimpering.

He fell asleep, and for the first time in days her screaming didn't wake him.

Food came again, and still it was silent.

He actually grew to _miss _the noises; without them to distract him, sitting around in pain on a hard floor was even more awful than it had been. He dragged himself up and stood right under the air shaft. "Girl?" he called up it. "_Girl_!"

Nothing.

"Finally stopped crying, did you? About fucking time."

Nothing.

"Answer me when I'm fucking talking to you, brat!"

Fat chance of _that._ Do it, he'd begged her. _Begged _her. And she'd been stone silent. Just like this.

"_Girl_! Arya!"

Nothing.

He tried to put it out of his mind, but he had a bad feeling all of a sudden, a heavy and foreboding feeling. It wasn't as if he minded that the bitch might be dead. He _didn't. _But he didn't like not knowing whether she'd moved her room or was just sitting listening to him in silence or was just... not.

"Answer me, girl," he said once more. Quietly, now. She wouldn't be able to hear him even if she _was _listening. "Just tell me if you're there."

Nothing. Food came.

* * *

Eventually – he'd long since lost track of how long – the door opened and it wasn't food. He didn't get up; his leg was a block of wood and the dull constant ache would burst into bright pain if he tried.

Elder Brother came close without speaking. Put his hand on Sandor's head a moment and Sandor didn't shake him off. "The girl?" Sandor said at last. Telling himself he didn't know.

Elder Brother walked slowly across the cell and sat down on the floor. "Gone."

"What happened?" As soon as the words were out he felt ridiculous. What the fuck did he _think_ had happened.

"The wound was terrible and became infected. We tried hard to save her leg, but..." He sighed. "You must remember that treatment for such a wound is not easy."

Not easy? He had never in his life wanted anything more than he wanted death during those days. He'd cursed the girl and the brothers and every single person whose memory he could wrap his mind around, which wasn't many as the fever clawed at him.

"A bad death," he said. He wanted Elder Brother to correct him: _no, I drugged her and she went in peace._

Instead Elder Brother sighed again. "Just as you intended."

"No-..." His turn to sigh. "Fuck… Don't know what I intended."

He could sense that the man was _waiting _for something. He realized then that they might turn him out, crippled and useless and alone. He would probably starve to death, with no one to remind him to eat. He wasn't sure he cared.

"I never told you what happened, did I," he said into the silence. "With the girl. Back then."

"Tell me now."

That was all Elder Brother had to say. "At first it was supposed to be for ransom..." Sandor poured the whole story out – wandering with her all angry and mistrustful, carrying her away from that butchery at the Twins, fighting for her, talking with her, teaching her.

"Why sound so mystified?" Elder Brother interrupted at last. "You know what friendship is. You found a friend, that's all."

He shook his head. It was a little embarrassing now to admit that he'd liked her and sacrificed for her, but it wasn't as if he hadn't already shouted it for the whole island to hear. "More than that. Look: she was a little wisp of a girl, and she sat on a horse all day while I fought and foraged and did all the work. But whenever we had food, I split it with her right down the middle." (Worse, even. More than once he'd caught himself giving her the bigger half when she looked like she needed it. Ignoring his own hunger pains.)

Elder Brother was quiet.

"Doesn't matter though. Whatever it was I regret it." He tried to laugh, but he knew it sounded awful. "She wouldn't even give me the gift of mercy when I asked. So much for _friends_, hm?"

Elder Brother was quiet for a bit longer. "But now you've had your vengeance," he said evenly.

"Aye, I suppose I have. For whatever that's worth."

"Are you sorry?"

"Sorry? Fuck that. Fuck _her,_ no, I'm not _sorry_." Elder Brother didn't answer, but he could _feel _the doubt rolling off him. He scowled and shrugged.

"You should dig a grave for her," Elder Brother said. "And then, I think you should leave."

So they were throwing him out after all. He could hardly blame them. "I'll dig." He thought of the shovel sinking in. "But you shouldn't let me leave," he said. "You should kill me. I swore once I'd watch over her, and now look."

"No. A dead man swore that," Elder Brother answered instantly. "A man who _died _fulfilling his vow. You don't owe anything."

Somehow he doubted that the girl would see things that way. He swallowed past a sudden thickness in his throat. "Did she-... what did she say, at the end?"

Elder Brother huffed. "Nothing that should be repeated between civilized men." He rose up to his feet – very slowly; it looked like sitting on the floor so long was difficult for him too. He put his hand on Sandor's head again a moment before he went out.

After Elder Brother was gone, Sandor settled in to brood.

Not ten minutes later, though, there were keys in the lock again.

The door opened, and Elder Brother stood in the doorway. "Good afternoon," he said, and came into the cell. He wasn't limping now.

* * *

**The End.**

**I kinda think that Arya had come by to kill him, but changed her mind. I dunno. Let me know what you thought of this fic!**


End file.
